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(c.1100–60),

‘Master of the Sentences’. He taught at the Cathedral School in Paris from 1143/4. In 1148 he opposed Gilbert de la Porrée at the Council of Reims and in 1159 he was appointed Bp. of Paris. His ‘Sentences’ are divided into four books on (1) the Trinity, (2) the Creation and Sin, (3) the Incarnation and the Virtues, and (4) the Sacraments and the Four Last Things. Though after his death, the orthodoxy of the work was challenged, after 1215 it became for some time the standard textbook of Catholic theology. Its teaching on the sacraments marked an important development; Peter was among the first to insist on the number seven, to distinguish them from sacramentals, and to clarify the conception by asserting the efficacy and causality of the sign.

(1) the Trinity, (2) the Creation and Sin, (3) the Incarnation and the Virtues, and (4) the Sacraments and the Four Last Things.